User blog:MongoosePirate/Tales From the Deletion Logs Part 5
Do Synths Dream of Synthetic Gorillas? In this blog, MongoosePirate, a history buff with way too much time on his hands, will look over some of the more colorful content that has graced this wiki in the past ranging from impractical weapons to impractical spin-offs of canon groups. Not all of these pages were bad, but all of them were deleted for one reason or another. Let's dive in... After the introduction of androids in Fallout 3 and before the appearance of synths in Fallout 4, the idea of artificially created people fascinated many on Tranquility Lane. Since many of the android's abilities were left unknown due Fallout 3's trademark vagueness, users tried to fill in the blanks with various new abilities pulled from similar concepts from popular culture, such as the Terminator from The Terminator series or the Replicants from Blade Runner. Today, we will be looking at four examples of android articles created before Fallout 4, which all vary in size and quality. The first android we will be looking is named Kain Ruger and is no doubt my favorite. Kain Ruger was created on March 15, 2009 by Run4urLife!. I'll let his introduction speak for him: Although Kain's creation was vastly different from a normal synths in Fallout 4, it did somewhat resemble Nick Valentine's, and Kain shared many other characteristics with normal synths, such as his ability to pass for a human even under heavy scrutiny and his job of hunting other escaped synths. To sum up Kain, his abilities were inspired by The Terminator and his story is inspired by Blade Runner. This is not a bad thing. In fact, I think if Bethesda had made coursers more like Kain Ruger, Fallout 4 would have been a more fun game. Kain's entire body is cybernetic while having a human brain and his body is practically super human, being very resilient, able to break concrete, and knock out a super mutant. In other words, Kain was basically a tank. He had fuel cells, like the Terminator, that were fission powered and eco-friendly! However, something notable is that Kain had no sense of smell or taste and could not feel pain, something that might make him stick out if people were looking for an android and knew that. His character arc of learning empathy resembles Roy Batty's from Blade Runner, though it has a decidedly happier ending. As Kain is hunting down rogue synths for the Institute, he begins regaining bits and pieces of his humanity through empathizing with his victims. He finally snapped when on mission to South Dakota (long way for a synth to run), a synth shows him empathy and rescues Kain from falling off a cliff. This is an obvious parallel to Roy Batty rescuing Deckard in Blade Runner. Kain has an epiphany about his continued humanity after that and decides to abandon the Institute once and for all. He becomes a pacifist and tries to live out his time farming after that. However, due to Kain's role as an RP character, this peace would not last, and he would later be roped into other people's problems. Kain would finally die during the events of RP: Nuke when he showed how far he had come since his creation and sacrificed himself by setting off the titular nuke, denying the competing factions of potentially using it to harm innocents. Kain Ruger, as I've said before, was my favorite android from this group and possibly my favorite pre-Big Wipe character. His concept, though no wholly original, is interesting, and his character progression is a welcome sight for a fan-made character. Hats off to User:Run4urLife!. I will end Kain's section with his top quote, another reference to Blade Runner. The next android we will be looking at is Colt Stanson, an android created in a similar vein to Nick Valentine, even more than Kain Ruger. Created on October 29, 2012 by User:Relken, Colt had the implanted memories of a World War II veteran who had taken part in some government project in the 1970's. Colt was something of an oddity in that he was created by the Brotherhood of Steel, not the Institute. It's rather funny really, looking back on Arthur Maxson's attitude towards synths in Fallout 4. Nonetheless, Colt Stanson serves the Brotherhood loyally, doing their dirty work and looking for some more commies to shoot on the way. He apparentlty makes a lot of trips serving the Brotherhood and is often seen trekking across the North American continent. Nothing is said of the technology that made Colt Stanson, and he doesn't seem to have been inspired by anything in particular. However, he does have a lot of choice quotes, which I will show you now: In closing, Colt Stanson was pretty inoffensive character, barring the weird pre-War android project origins. Even with that, he at least has some personality to him, which I like. The next android brings us back to the Institute, Rym. Created on February 9, 2013, Rym has the least story to him but is probably closest to synths we got in Fallout 4. Rym scavenged in the wasteland for valuable tech to bring back to the Institute, something synths do in Fallout 4. He even has a conflict with the Brotherhood of Steel, having taken a piece of tech the Brotherhood saw first apparently. Rym also had a strong sense of "Law and Order, something seen by many of the Institute synths such as X6-88. The only thing off about Rym was the fact he apparently went through and survived the Sierra Madre, getting some sweet gear through the experience. More info on Rym can be found here. Rym was an RP character first and foremost, so many of his adventures around America are not on his page. The last android we will be looking at is no doubt the most entertaining: Raiden Asura Nakazora. Raiden was created July 6, 2013 by User:FatalKenshen and hit the ground running. I'm just going to leave Raiden's introduction here to give you an idea of who he was: So, a portrait of a much harsher straight-forward Institute that doesn't beat around the proverbial moral bush. They beat synths instead. Anyways, the article goes on to talk about how Raiden got beaten so bad that part of the skin on his face got taken off, showing the metal underneath. This is no doubt a nod to The Terminator, you know the one. After multiple beatings and angsting, Raiden saw one day at "Main Catering" that one of the guards was flirting with a young woman who was clearly an android. I just let you read the rest of the scene: So yeah, this biracial Japanese named android just liberated all the androids from slavery under the Institute because he saw a woman get slapped. Something, huh? Anyways, this article in particular leaves me with so many questions. Why does an android in post-War America have a Japanese name and ethnicity? Why does his userbox classify him as a serial killer? Why is he dressed as an NCR Ranger in his picture? Why am I being so needlessly nitpicky about a four year old deleted article? Alas, these are things we shall never know. In closing, the androids of Tranquility Lane yesteryear were better than I had expected. That was a pleasant surprise for me, since all of my last couple of Tales From the Deletion Logs have been overwhelmingly negative. On a related note, I am sorry if I've given people the impression that the pre-Big Wipe era was a complete shitshow because it wasn't. There were articles like Kain Ruger that stood out from the Bren Tenkages and the John Everstrikes. But in the end, Kain Ruger and the rest were deleted and now only reside in the deletion logs and some remaining RPs. Next time, we see glimpses of the future... Category:Blog posts Category:Tales From the Deletion Logs